Poor Students at Columbia Take Their Angst Public, and the School Responds

A group of low-income Columbia University students launched a Facebook page last week that offered an unfiltered lesson on what it’s like to be poor and attending one of the most expensive schools in the country.

Since it was created on March 22, more than 260 students have posted to the page, Columbia University Class Confessions, many to share stories about balancing classes with earning a living—or in some extreme cases, scrounging money for meals. Mandeep Singh, a senior and co-president of Columbia's First-Generation Low-Income Partnership, the student group behind the page, says its purpose is to highlight the reality of life for students who may be paying their tuition with help from the school administration and have little left to spend on survival in New York. More than 1,700 people have liked the page in a little over a week.